Asteroid 2020 QL2 bigger than two football fields to fly by Earth today will it hit our planet

The asteroid’s size could be anywhere between 53 meters (174 feet) and 120 meters.

New Delhi

Jagran Trending Desk

The space rock, Asteroid QL2, which is considered potentially hazardous is going to fly by the earth today, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The asteroid is expected to pass by our planet with an approximate speed of 38,620 kmph (24,000 mph) and is going to come within a range of 6.8 million kms (4.2 million miles).

The asteroid’s size could be anywhere between 53 meters (174 feet) and 120 meters, according to NASA,which could be bigger than the size of two football fields put together.

NASA, however, assured that it has almost no chances of hitting the Earth. NASA defines the near-Earth object (NEO) as a space object that has a perihelion distance of less than 1.3 astronomical units (au). On the other hand, Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are the ones that have Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 au (or 7.4 million kilometres) or less and measure more than 460 feet in diameter.

Considering its current path, the Asteroid QL2 will pass at a distance that would be roughly ten times the distance between the Moon and the Earth.

This asteroid had come as close as 1.2 lakh kilometre from Earth, NASA data indicates that the closest approach of an asteroid of its size in the ten years to come. The asteroid was between 22 to 50 metres wide and had passed by us on 1 September.

Posted By: Deeksha Sharma